General tips
This page lists generals tips for new players. This page does not contain spoilers but the links probably will. General principles * The game is all about checking over documents as quickly as possible. Just practicing will help a great deal to start with. * You get paid 5 credits for every person processed, minus any penalties incurred. Processing 11 people a day will keep your family comfortable in class 8 lodgings, although you may want to alternate spending as described below in order to have savings for bad days. * You can make two errors per day without incurring a penalty (you receive warnings). You can use these to take story actions or to skip difficult cases to increase overall speed. After two citations, you will be penalized for each visitor processed wrongly. The first two fines are 5 credits, each citations from then on will increase the penalty by five credits (so the pattern is 0, 0, 5, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and so on). * On each day, there will be a number of randomly generated visitors, and a smaller number of scripted visitors who are part of the story. Random visitors can vary between different playthroughs, but scripted visitors always have the same papers every time they appear. This means you can "cheat" by using your prior knowledge and/or this wiki. If a person has abormal dialogue when they enter the booth, they are scripted. * If anyone presents a press pass, you can be getting out the denial stamp while they are talking. * You cannot prevent any of the scripted terrorist attacks. Yes, this means your job is kind of pointless. Welcome to Arstotzka. However, not all terrorist attacks are scripted: it is possible to have a day cut off early by letting a suicide bomber through (they will have mismatched weight and their bomb will be visible under search; strangely they will not use their bomb when detained) * Following instructions from your superiors, or anyone who seems to be your superior, is always a safe bet. Even if the action turns out to be wrong, you can shift the blame. * Although it might look as though the visitor can see the material you leave on the small desk on the left of the screen, they can't. * When the paperwork becomes complex, check one document at a time and drop it on the left-hand desk when you're done. * You can pay for food and heating on alternate days at very little penalty. Medicine must always be paid for immediately, though. * Memorizing the Arstotzkan districts, passport issuing cities and seals makes the work go much quicker. Alternatively you can use a cheat sheet which gather this information together onto a single paper you can print out or display in another window. This is not really cheating as the GOG.com version of the game comes with one of these. (Minor note: you can use the investigation tool for highliting a 'Passport iss. field must be valid' in the rulebook without being on the correct page for a specific country, this speeds up the review process since you only have to turn a few pages to find the first 'Passport iss. field must be valid' rule.) * If you are unsure about a piece of information, the investigation tool will help you. * No loyal Arstotzkan who values their excellent pay and superb living conditions would engage in bribery and corruption. A shame, then, that you don't seem to be provided with those things... * ...But if you are thinking of, say, throwing in with any mysterious criminal conspiracies, you should be definite and sure in that choice. Playing both sides against the other or walking a middle path may leave you with no friends on either side. Document tips Fast-track denials The game's tutorial days don't make this quite clear, but you don't have to inspect/interrogate every error; in some cases you can simply stamp denied and hand the documents back. This can speed up your processing a great deal. Once the blue reason for denial stamp enters play you must inspect/interrogate in order for the reason stamp to be properly prepared. If the reason stamp is not in play, you can fast track these cases: * Missing Documents: if any document is missing you can deny immediately. Sometimes if you inspect/interrogate the visitor will supply the missing document, but you are not required to give them this opportunity; there is no penalty for denying based on what is presented at first. The exception is if the missing document is the passport, in which case you have nowhere to stamp until you inspect/interrogate. * Expired Documents: you can deny flat for this. There's little point in interrogating since there isn't really anything the visitor can say. Sometimes a visitor will present a document with an expiry date that falls before Arstotzka actually introduced that type of document, which presumably means it's forged, but you cannot do any more than Deny them. * Mismatched Speech: if a visitor's spoken reason for visit or length of stay does not match their entry permit, you can Deny immediately. If you interrogate, they will always correct themselves; but as with missing documents, you aren't required to provide this opportunity until the introduction of the blue "Reason" stamp. Gameplay tips *You can hover your mouse over the rulebook and hit arrow keys on your keyboard to flip pages to save time. This will not bring the rulebook on top even if there are other documents on top of it and will even work in the inspection mode. *Check the person's sex and weight first. Body searches take the most time to find out if discrepancies remain. You can use this time to keep looking for other discrepancies in the documents, in the case they have just gained weight or have intersex conditions. Note that during earlier days, documents typically have only one discrepancy maximum. Category:Gameplay